I feel very similar despite the fact that I played the game a second time, and had everyone live. When I first played I sat back after getting the device to go through the relay in order to collect more meterials for upgrades. I figured like most games, it wouldn't matter that I waited to go through the relay, that the crew that got taken by the collectors would be dead/saved no matter what. Not only that, but I made some mistakes with the suicide mission, because I had multiple squad mates die, including Mordin and Miranda.

It sucked to lose them and to see my capture crew melted before my eyes, but it made the ending so much more powerful. We beat the collectors, but not without cost. It added weight to my story and honestly I think it was much more satisfying then having all of my squad mates come out unscathed. So when I finally play Mass Effect 3, I am pretty sure that I will be going with my less perfect file, because its imperfections made it unique to me.

@OleMarthin said:

@MarkWahlberg: depending on your choice you don't always end up with the party members loyalty even if you do the "loyalty mission". and yeah i agree with your opinion about the way they handled the squad selection in the ending of the game.

Hm. I'd just figured they had a 'you're a jerk but I respect you' version of the loyalties. Oh well.

I think what really bothers me about all this is that, Mass Effect doesn't get this level of attention because it does these things well, but because it's the only game doing them.

kind of funny. Miranda  is dead too in my game.  she and jack got into that argument about cerberus i sided with jack and needed full paragon to get  Miranda  to come around. however my Sheppard was more of a middle of the road kind of gal, and there were not enough missions left for me to fill out the bar. after that nor matter where i put her in the suicide mission she would always end up dead. not wanting to play the suicide mission for a 3nd time, i just accepted  Miranda  died in my game. im just curious if she had a bigger role to play in ME3 or if she would just pop up for a quick hello. guess i'll find out in play through 2. where on my other save file she and everyone else lived. 

I am probably a coward but I looked up how to make sure all of my crew members lived specifically Jack and Tali. Miranda I wouldn't of minded but I felt like I would of been a bad leader if I didn't make sure the team was absolutely prepared and had the best odds of survival.

Don't worry Pattrick! Once you get to the ending, you wont care about Mass Effect anymore anyway!

To Patrick, Mass Effect 2's suicide mission was a one-time deal, and he paid the price. So did she.

One of your best posts, Patrick. Thanks for writing it.

@BrockNRolla: If it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. I get that. But I thought this was pretty interesting, hearing how one person got affected by a game in a completely different way than I did. That's the great thing about games. The better games get, the more we'll hear stories like this.

I lost Legion, Thane, and Samara in my Suicide Mission for 2, and the things they did to replace Legion's role was pretty cool. I came across several Asari in my ME3 run, none of whom were "justicars", so I'm not sure if she had a surrogate. As for Thane, I never came across any of his sort of people, or any assassins; so my bet during 2's suicide mission that he was a throwaway character were vindicated. (I had failed his loyalty mission on purpose.)

Though, Patrick, you're missing much much much more than a cameo and a pep talk by missing Miranda and Tali.

I enjoyed this article

Best piece you've written for the bomb so far Patrick. Nice one.

Damn it, Im trying to finish ME2 with only Morinth and Zaeed alive but that bitch Miranda just wont die. Any suggestions? I got not ship upgrades. Which chars should I pick for leaders and stuff?

@phrosnite: Make Miranda do the barrier.

Good for you Patrick. Never understood why people would make sure everybody survived by either looking up a guide or replaying it. Everybody surviving is the ultimate boring result. Let your Mass Effect experience be as unique and personal as possible.

@freshym said:

I like the Miranda character, she's pretty cold at first, only concerned with her mission, but as you learn more about her you see why she turned out this way and it really makes you feel for her. I haven't finished ME2, but I can easily see why people would have an affection toward her. The character interactions are probably the only thing driving me through ME2, if only the combat was good.

People who don't like Miranda just made up their minds about her from the beginning and never gave the character a chance.

Most of them avoided her because of first impressions (her looks and her control chip statement for example), which actually made me a lot more interested in her. She was direct and didn't care what others thought of her. I liked that.

Once you actually get to know her you find someone who's tough, intelligent and very determined. You can definitely understand where she's coming from, and can positively influence her. She's an awesome character and my favorite from the ME universe (closely followed by Mordin).

1) I somehow got through the suicide mission with everyone alive on my first try. Though I've heard that Mordin can randomly die even if you did everything right? But yeah, I probably would've retried if say Garrus, Tali or Jack got killed.

As is I find it amazing how many of my decisions from the first two games get woven into the story, in major ways in some cases. Obviously wether some of your teammates are still alive is one of them. Then there's the "who did you shack up with in ME and ME 2" options.

I have so many ideas on what else I want to see I'll probably play through ME 3 at least 3-4 times, plus an additional playthrough of ME 2 (maybe I'll just get a save though).

No Miranda or Tali in Mass Effect 3?! Bummer. I'm glad someone had the balls to stick with their original Mass Effect 2 outcome. I know I didn't.

@patrickklepek said:

You guys think about the separation of news, editorial, opinions, etc. way more than I do.

And people are saying you should think about it more.

I just happened to luck out and have no one die. I thought Mordin was going to eat it at one point but he squeaked through. In all honesty I probably would've done another play through if they had. I know that's lame but I'd die if curiosity, never knowing what could've happened. Also I agree with everyone, personally I would've been MUCH more upset over tali

Somehow everyone survived the suicide attempt, Mirande included. It was when I met her again in ME3 that I realized why I like her, and more so than the other characters I presumed to be more interested in, having the option to interact with them again. I went in to ME3 with the ambition to continue the relationship with Ashley from the first game. Immediatly as Miranda showed up I saw with the comparison that she is better realized as a character with facial expressions and visual emotions. I clinged on to that. Then I loaded an earlier save and told Ash I in fact wasn't that interested anymore!

I am in the middle of my ME2 play and I already an feeling the tug of looking things up online. I am playing mostly paragon, and know that my Shepard wants things to go a certain way and what her motivations are in the game, if I were to lose some party members, I personally would feel cheated. While I don't really have any attachments to Jack, she is still a party of this crazy ass team and losing her would suck. When that fateful suicide mission comes, if it doesn't go my way I don't know if I'll be able to keep myself from going back to my last save. Great article Patrick!

@patrickklepek said:

You guys think about the separation of news, editorial, opinions, etc. way more than I do.

And people are saying you should think about it more.

Miranda was horrible character anyways. Tali on the hand, you should feel bad Patrick. Her and Garrus are the only two that always have Shepard's back, and I can't even imagine a version of Mass Effect without them.

Great read Patrick, it echoes a lot of my thoughts when playing through ME3 only its about Tali with me

@Napalm said:

@gladspooky said:

@patrickklepek said:

You guys think about the separation of news, editorial, opinions, etc. way more than I do.

And people are saying you should think about it more.

Giant Bomb exists for the personalities. If you don't like opinion pieces, then why the fuck are you even here.

I come here because I expect good things, because this is usually a pretty good site when it comes to handling news, etcetera. And when their otherwise stellar coverage falls short, I poke them with a stick. I wouldn't expect any less if I was on the other side.

The only character to die during my suicide mission was Jack, which was on purpose. I hated Jack and didn't want to listen to her angsty shit anymore.

I'm sure somebody else probably mentioned this, but I have two Shepards.

My Femshep is my Paragon, she does everything that needs to be done in the galaxy and, at the end of Mass Effect 2, kept everybody alive. She always does the right thing, says the right thing, and would never punch a reporter even when she really, really should.

My Maleshep on the other hand... let's just say he's kind of like a drunk, abusive friend. Sure, he's still out doing the "good" thing... but that's mostly to offset all of the bad things he does. Always Renegade, always spouting off, being a smartass, pissing people off, taking the shortest route... and, in Mass Effect 2, I didn't get the loyalty of a single member (needless to say, quite a few of them did not make it).

As much as I enjoyed playing through Mass Effect 3 as my Femshep, I'm more looking forward to playing through with my Maleshep because now I'll get to see the giant plot holes where members would be or see how things go when that member should be there to save the day and isn't.

Hell, at the ending, maybe he'll choose red? Who knows. Sky is the limit.

Maybe it was her ridunk t&a

I wish Miranda died in my suicide mission. Actually I wish a lot more people died in my suicide mission, its a suicide mission damnit, and Bioware made it too easy for everyone to come out alive. I BS'ed my most recent playthrought and still had to make an effort just to get one person killed.

@Goldanas said:

@phrosnite: Make Miranda do the barrier.

I did. This is how Garrus dies. So I have 11 teammates(no Kasumi)... Jack, Legion and Thane die because I have no ship upgrades. Jacob dies after vents(biotic headshoted). Garrus dies on reaper swarm because Miranda is a weakling. Mordin dies as the leader of the 2nd team. Tali gets killed by the metal slate after we kill the reaper. Only 3 guys are left to "hold the doors" and they all survive. F-ing bullshit! I will be content with Morinth, Zaeed and Grunt surviving but Miranda always lives. Argh.

@Goldanas said:

@patrickklepek: People have trouble expressing what they feel and often get lost in the semantics. When an argument boils out, they defend their statements even though that isn't truly what they meant.

It's fine and you should do more stuff like it. I think the thing to take away from this is that people probably just don't appreciate the flowery way you recounted the final moments of your experience in ME2 in order to illustrate the impact of consequence. To be fair, it's not so great.

You probably could have omitted it or dramatically shortened it to a few lines and gotten to the major point of your article much sooner, and no one would complain because it's actually a good discussion topic.

Oh, I have no problem if people don't like the article, or have suggestions, or think I meandered before getting to the real point (consequences). I'd probably agree with them on that last one.

I felt worse that Miranda lived in ME 3 when...

I should say that I've also gone into ME 3 with my original, imperfect save file, however I fared far better than Patrick did. Zaeed and the general Normandy crew didn't survive the suicide mission :( but I made the most obvious choices so that everyone else made it through to my final battle with the reapers.

@SleepyBuddha said:

@freshym said:

I like the Miranda character, she's pretty cold at first, only concerned with her mission, but as you learn more about her you see why she turned out this way and it really makes you feel for her. I haven't finished ME2, but I can easily see why people would have an affection toward her. The character interactions are probably the only thing driving me through ME2, if only the combat was good.

People who don't like Miranda just made up their minds about her from the beginning and never gave the character a chance.

Most of them avoided her because of first impressions (her looks and her control chip statement for example), which actually made me a lot more interested in her. She was direct and didn't care what others thought of her. I liked that.

Once you actually get to know her you find someone who's tough, intelligent and very determined. You can definitely understand where she's coming from, and can positively influence her. She's an awesome character and my favorite from the ME universe (closely followed by Mordin).

I felt the same way about James Vega in this game. People seemed willing to write him off at first due to his initial appearance, but I ended up liking him a lot as a character over the course of the game.

Good read Patrick, the only thing is I found it incredibly easy to keep everyone alive. I really like the Mass Effect series, but to me (besides the Kaidan and Ashley choice in 1) the series never makes you make any difficult decisions. You can easily make everything turn out the way you want it to if you just take your time and do everything. I'm surprised to see a lot of people saying they had to use a guide to make sure to keep everyone alive, or that they did have multiple squadmates die, I really didn't find it to be that hard at all. It always seemed really clear cut how to gain every characters loyalty. I really didn't find it difficult to keep all the squad members alive, but so far 3 has been the biggest offender of "your choices don't really matter because everyone is going to help you anyway" though I haven't finished the game yet. The series is great, but I think people really give the games way to much credit for "making choice matter" because they really don't. The Witcher 2 is a better example of making choices that matter.

@Abendlaender said:

@Shaanyboi:

Well, maybe it didn't help that Bioware stated that Mass Effect 3 will have "almost infinite endings"

However, thanks to the embarassing internet croud I am now afraid to say that I didn't like the ME3 ending because I don't want anything to do with all the whiners out there.

I didn't like the ending. It is not the end of my (real) world. The end.

And that's totally reasonable. If the ending is shit, it's shit. And yeah, tell Bioware that they fucked up if it'll be cathartic. Give them negative feedback so that the next time around, they'll be like "Okay, we REALLY need to think about if this is a quality story or not.". But all this "YOU OWE ME A BETTER ENDING" bullshit is just so fucking dumb.

Conceptually, the Suicide Mission is pretty amazing, but the fact that everyone can come out alive rather easily (just do all loyalty missions and get all upgrades--what you actually do in the mission doesn't really matter), and that who does die seems rather random makes it lose a bit of its effect.

However, going through a mission knowing that at any time some unplanned squad member can die is a pretty amazing experience, especially knowing that their death means you won't ever see them again. It makes the ending of Mass Effect 2 one of the best ending missions in recent memory. Vague ME3 spoilers: I wish Mass Effect 3 followed a similar route with its ending, with you able to completely fail if unprepared, and each character viable for death.

As for Miranda, I rather liked her. I took her on most ME2 missions because she had Warp, Overload, and squad buffs, and her arc was rather interesting. You aren't missing much by her not being in ME3, but it was still nice to see her.

I lost Jack in me2. I was dismissive and blunt toward her, and in the end we were not friends. Then I sent her to escort the Normandy crew back to the shuttle... and she saved them all, but was killed in the process. Shepard felt pretty guilty about this, and now, the next Jack that comes along.. she'll give em a chance. My Shepard has many regrets... and I think I like it that way.

In my Mass Effect, Miranda died, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

Yes there is. Replay ME2 so everyone lives. why wouldn't you want everyone to survive the suicide mission?

Despite the fact that I'm somewhat compulsive in my urge to see all the content presented to me, Mass Effect has always been exempt from that for me.

I've always lived with the outcome of my decisions.

I got a little lucky though in that through my completionist playthrough of ME2 and dumb-luck/intuiting the final mission, everyone lived for me. So I've been happily bumping into characters left and right so far in my 10 hours of ME3.

That doesn't stop me wondering, though, what the universe would be like without them.

I started a new (evil lady) ME1 Shepard ages ago, then blew through the whole remains of ME1 a couple weekends ago, and I'm amazed that it actually held up, so long as you knew how to play it (avoid side missions/the mako entirely, set combat to easy). I can't wait to get back to her and guide her through ME2 so I can see the whole story play out way differently.

Just the breadth of change that you can create, even within the bounds of the story that must be told (first Shep: good guy, saved the Council, saved the Rachni, helped all the crew and civilians; second Shep: evil lady, killed/sacrificed everybody who got in her way).

This is such a well-constructed universe that you actually feel compelled to act in the interests of your characters and to adhere to what you feel is the 'right' version of the universe, even when there's proven to be so much to see by making different choices.

I'm also really enjoying ME3 so far, despite the scads of doubters and nay-sayers. I think some people want something that Mass Effect isn't, and maybe never has been, except in their minds.

Those boobs look utterly ridiculous

Anyone critical of this article is just jelly they aren't getting paid to update their livejournal too.

My Miranda was a bitch. She got way out of line with Jack once, I told her to chill, and then she went psycho crazy and decided to get the fish eyes dude killed during the suicide mission as a way to pay me back.

I let is slide on that playthrough but on my evil Shepherd playthrough I made sure that she (really everyone but my trusted mind/ai hack crew of Tali and Morinth) would never see the light of day again.

I haven't played three yet but from what I've heard none of it matters since only like 3 characters from the entire saga can join your party anyways.

I didnt care for Grunt and lost him in my suicide mission, and I was surprised to find that in any encounters with the Krogan in ME3, I found myself feeling really rather guilty about not bringing him back alive.

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

@Tiwi said:

@RoboRobb said:

@phrosnite said:

Miranda sucks anyway. I dont know why people like her.

because boobs?

No... because ass.

No, because boobs AND ass!

For me it's because it's Yvonne Strahovski.

@Fozimuth said:

I just played all of the loyalty missions. I heard the Reaper IFF was the point of no return basically, so I did all the missions and nobody got killed in my game. I'm not sure how you would manage to get anybody killed. The recruitment and loyalty missions are literally 70% of the main game, so I don't know why you would skip them. And the choices aren't too hard. Garrus led his own team on Omega (that he talks about incessantly), so have him lead the secondary teams. Tali is a machinist/ engineer, so have her hack the tubes. Samara and Jack are pure biotic, so have them make the shield. And so on. I'd like to hear what decisions people made in the last mission that actually got squadmates killed.

For me, Garrus was a horrible choice for a leader, considering he was a failed rent-a-cop on the Citadel, and managed to get his entire team killed. Jacob, natural leader? More like security guard at a top secret scientific facility where he sat around for 2 years eating donuts and playing Space Sudoku. Miranda could have lead the fire team, but I relied on her for her versatility, making her useful against foes with barriers or shields, depending on who I was facing.

No, for me, the obvious choices for leader were Samara, who was a Justicar, something akin to a Spectre with a thousand years of combat experience... of course, she also seemed like a bit of a loner, so I went with Zaeed, a guy who was such a natural leader that he not only lead his mercenary teams to victory, it happened often enough he was able to turn it into a galaxy-spanning organization before being betrayed.

But no, Tali took a bullet to the face for my overthinking it. Oh well.

Most players I know found a walkthrough to learn how to keep everyone alive, hoping to bring everyone along for the final ride against the Reapers.

I lost Legion, funny enough it actually almost made the story more fulfilling by adding the an element of redemption and loss of this Geth that had tried to free his people and even with all the burdens of the universe behind him gave his life to save the universe....

This is a lovely article, Patrick. I'm a big fan of these kind of opinion pieces and personals.

I lost Thane in my playthrough, I was upset because things had been going so well up until then. After I let it rattle around in the back of my mind for a while, during the rest of the session until my next save, I decided I wouldn't reload to fix it. I figured that if Mass Effect were a movie, Thane would have been the one to die saving another character (see Bruce Willis and Armageddon), it just seemed fitting.

Now working my way through one and two with a character I plan to import through the 3 games (previously a switch to PC after the first one prevented this) I am struggling with the idea of whether to try to keep everyone alive or to make sure Thane bites it again so I have the continuity that feels right. Although, I do plan to rework the other aspects of my ending so the Normandy isn't a ghost town when I triumphantly return from the ill-named "Suicide Mission"... That was more jarring than my loss of Thane...